Lurkdragon Stuff

The creative works blog of Sparky Lurkdragon, where I post things I had a direct hand in making, like writing, art, musings, and so on. I'm also on AO3 and DeviantArt. They/them pronouns.

[lurkdragonstuff]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Fandom: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions Wordcount: 1,603 Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Hilda/N Characters: Touko | Hilda, N Harmonia Additional Tags: Awkward Sexual Situations, Awkward N Harmonia, Fluff, Accidental Touching, Huddling For Warmth, Clothes stay on, Post-Pokemon Black 2 & White 2, Sexual Inexperience, discussion of sex ed Summary: N and Hilda's first winter storm in the partially-restored Castle Plasma proves that they have a long way to go before the place is comfortable enough to be a home again. Perhaps it's a good thing they have sleeping bags that can zip together, or perhaps that just makes the whole thing more awkward.

[lurkdragonstuff]

Fandom: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time & Explorers of Darkness & Explorers of Sky, Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Juptile | Grovyle & Player Character (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon) Characters: Player Character (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon), Juptile | Grovyle (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon), Houou | Ho-Oh Additional Tags: past major character death, Celebi (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon) mentioned, minor Dragonite OC, N Harmonia mentioned, non-canon character names, Post-Apocalypse, Paralyzed Planet (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon), Pokemon Name Culture, Angst, Internal Crossover Summary: For generations, Primal Dialga has ruled the paralysed planet. When the resistance to his regime receives some information about a possible secret weapon that could finally give them an opening to bring him down, they send some of their members to the grave of a legendary creature called a 'human.' There, they intend to revive it and ask for its help.

[lurkdragonstuff]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Title: Baneful Fandom: Pocket Monsters: Black 2 & White 2 | Pokemon Black 2 & White 2 Versions, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series) Word Count: 1,990 Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Characters: N Harmonia, N's Zoroark, G-Cis Harmonia | Ghetsis Harmonia, Dark Trinity | Shadow Triad, Black Kyurem Additional Tags: Horror, Bad Ending, Human on Pokémon violence, Pokémon on human violence, Comes Back Wrong, non-canon character names, Ghosts, Rosa or Nate mentioned, Hero of Ideals N Summary: Zekrom and Kyurem are one Pokémon under Ghetsis' control, N's oldest friend has been murdered, and N is running for his life.

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Happy Halloween! Have some Black 2 bad end horror with a little flavour from Hisui. The intro is loosely based on an RP with Ardil the Traveller from years ago, but it quickly goes even further sideways.

This fic uses headcanon names for N (Narinder), his Zoroark friend (Sampson), and one of the Shadow Triad. It also uses the headcanon that Pokémon don't usually use their real names in public, only with family and close friends.

[lurkdragonstuff]

Guiding Harmonia headcanons for me, constructed when we only had Black/White 1 to go on, or, why I ignore BW2 re:the Harmonias in my own writing:

Concordia and Anthea are in the younger end of Ghetsis' generation. If he's the equivalent of a Boomer, they're either the equivalent of young Boomers or old Gen X.

N is Ghetsis and Concordia's biological son; Anthea's his aunt.

Yes, Connie married Ghetsis. No, it is not a healthy marriage.

N's real name is Narinder, which Ghetsis came up with. It means "lord of men" and is exactly the kind of overblown name Ghetsis would give someone with the purpose he had in mind.

N uses his initial as a nickname because Pokemon believe that you don't just share your real name with strangers, only friends and family. He'd have gone as Human if Ghetsis hadn't talked him down to a compromise that sounded a little less weird for Unovan human culture.

The Shadow Triad are the adopted ones. They're about the same age as N and think of Ghetsis as their lord first and father second. He rescued them from a house fire when they were seven. Did he have something to do with the fire happening in the first place? Probably, but they don't know/won't admit that.

N didn't spend any amount of time actually in the wild as a kid. He never left Castle Plasma until shortly before the game started; it's just that the castle had some (intentionally) overgrown grounds that he ran around in when he wasn't in his room.

AS YOU CAN IMAGINE some of the clarifications in BW2 didn't work well with me. They ranged from misunderstandings (Connie and Anthea look of ambiguous age in the BW1 intro and their overworld sprites aren't any help) to canon having explanations that clashed with my guesses (his real name if he had one would probably start with an N but it could have been anything. That said "Natural" is one no one would have guessed because it is so stupid) to canon apparently trying to soften the horror that is Ghetsis (see no he took in a feral child that he somehow found it's... not fine but that's a little less horrible isn't it?).

So like I often do when I bang headfirst into weird recons and clarifications that I don't like, I just consider BW2 persona non grata when it comes to the Harmonias. *shrugs* Good game, shit sequel. Many such cases.

[lurkdragonstuff]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Fandom: Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series) Wordcount: 2,393 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Ghetsis Harmonia, Kyurem (Pokemon) Additional Tags: internalized ableism, Bad Parenting, Not Ghetsis' bad parenting for once, Pre-Canon, Pokémon on human violence, Ghetsis Harmonia is his own content warning Summary: A young adult Ghetsis challenges Kyurem to be its hero and pays the price for his hubris. But he learns from the experience.

[lurkdragonstuff]

A good phrase to have in your Fiction Engagement Toolkit is "I could have done without that."

Listen. Listen. Nothing's perfect. Especially when you broaden your horizons and experience stories from different times and places than the one you grew up in. And when you get old enough, works from that time and place, too. You are going to run into things that make you uncomfortable, and you are going to run into jokes and blithe statements that piss you off.

And maybe those things are offensive enough to make you drop a work on sight or never pick it up in the first place. That's perfectly fine! I've done that. I have my set of Things I Could Have Done Without that will make me put the work itself into the pile of Things I Can Do Without. Sometimes one too many small Things I Could Have Done Without pile up in one work to cause this reaction.

Sometimes the author is an ass and I decide that, no matter how good the work itself is, I Could Do Without It because of that. Not just the ones you're likely thinking of, in this time and place of English-speaking Tumblr in 2025; I have a shitlist that includes them but extends to several others.

But sometimes - oftentimes - I might think, "Eh, I could have done without that, but it was made 20/50/100/1000 years ago." Or, "Eh, I could have done without that, but it told me a little about what the author and their people were thinking about in this time and place, and it's valuable for this reason."

And it may be things that aren't really offensive, either! It could be, "I could have done without seeing the strings on the bats in this old movie," or "I could have done without that obnoxious level in this old videogame."

Many of my absolute favourite stories have bits in them that I could have done without. And the more I catch up on older, influential works, the more I find myself saying "Mmm, I could have done without that bit."

But I'm not going to throw them away over it.

[lurkdragonstuff]

Fandom: Sonic the Hedgehog (Video Games) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Wordcount: 1,024  Relationships: Shadow the Hedgehog & Sonic the Hedgehog Characters: Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog Additional Tags: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Nightmares, Fluff and Angst, Mentioned Maria Robotnik, Mentioned Gerald Robotnik, Depression, Trauma Recovery, whump fight, Whump Fight 2025, Canonical Character Death mentioned, mild Blood and Violence Summary:Sonic drops by Shadow's apartment on the anniversary of the ARK disaster.

[lurkdragonstuff]

Fandom: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom Rating: Mature Wordcount: 1,187  Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Characters: Link (Hero of the Wild), Yiga Clan (Legend of Zelda) Additional Tags: MCD is taken to mean 'major within the fic's framework', Whump Fight 2025, whump fight, Whump, Blood and Gore, Dismemberment, Swordfighting, Swordfighting is fast and brutal when it's for keeps, Snow Means Death Summary: "I see... red... a crimson... deep and rich... oooh. It's the most beautiful colour I've ever seen..."

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Link gets ambushed by a Yiga assassin near the Hebra Trailhead Lodge.

[lurkdragonstuff]

Fandom: Shadow of the Colossus (Video Game), ICO (Video Game), Original Work Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Wordcount: 2,389  Relationships: Wander (Shadow of the Colossus) & Ico (ICO) & Yorda (ICO), Wander (Shadow of the Colossus) & Koen Dijkstra (OC) Characters: Wander (Shadow of the Colossus), Ico (ICO), Yorda (ICO), Koen Dijkstra (OC) Additional Tags: Immortal Wander (Shadow of the Colossus), whump fight, Whump Fight 2025, Wander the Dad (Shadow of the Colossus), Slavery, Abuse, Rescue, Wander to the Rescue (Shadow of the Colossus), mild violence Summary: Wander and the kids run across a fellow in need of help.

[sparkylurkdragon]

I've only been under anaesthesia once that I'm aware of.

Nothing too weird happened, according to the folks helping me out and my own memories once I woke up. It was for my first colonoscopy, which was last year. Hm? Yeah, thirty-six is a bit young to start those. Family history. Means I get to have them every five years instead of the standard ten, so I'll have lots of chances to gather weirder anaesthesia stories.

Anyway, once I was able to walk, my support worker and I went to the Burger King down the hill from the hospital, because I had done Colonoscopy Prep, which for the uninitiated means you have to eat a liquid diet (with no red dyes! No red jello) for a day beforehand and fast for twelve hours before the procedure, the only thing you're allowed once the fast starts being this absolutely vile concoction that makes you shit your brains out. (And water. So much water. You are instructed to pound water.)

So there I am, ready to eat the entire universe, still pretty loopy from the drugs, and possessing a stutter when I'm stressed. I wobbled my way up to the counter and slurred my way through ordering what was to be the most delicious Burger King chicken sandwich I have ever eaten, then paused for a moment.

The cashier had a pleasant, kind of knowing smile.

In retrospect, I'm sure they get a lot of loopy patients from the nearby hospital and that it's not a big deal, but I felt the need to clear the record. "I swear I'm not drunk," I garbled. "I just came out of surgery."

[lurkdragonstuff]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Fandom: 逆転裁判 | Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Wordcount: 885 Relationship: Odoroki Housuke | Apollo Justice & Nahyuta Sahdmadhi Characters: Odoroki Housuke | Apollo Justice, Nahyuta Sahdmadhi Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Post-Spirit of Justice, Oneshot, Slice of Life Summary: After it's all said and done, Apollo invites Nahyuta over to his law offices to catch up. The conversation eventually turns to how Apollo met Phoenix.

[sonicfandomsecretsanta]

@sparkylurkdragon submitted:

Hey there, @nodulemodule !

I heard you like Shadamy and good character dynamics, so I wrote you a little story where the two of them go to the fair!

Have a safe and happy holiday season!

[lurkdragonstuff]

Now that the giftee has seen it, here are the details for everyone else!

Fandom: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types Rating: General Audiences Wordcount: 1,520 Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Amy Rose/Shadow the Hedgehog Characters: Amy Rose (Sonic the Hedgehog), Shadow the Hedgehog Additional Tags: Fluff, Carnival, Oneshot, Gift Exchange, Sonic Fandom Secret Santa, Secret Santa Summary: Amy drags Shadow to the fair.

A gift for the Sonic Fandom Secret Santa exchange of 2024.

[lurkdragonstuff]

It is 2018, and there is time for Gris.

Beautiful little game about grief. Cried at the end and enjoyed my time with it.

[lurkdragonstuff]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Wanna read some haiku about dragon sewers? Of course you do!

[lurkdragonstuff]

It is 2020, and there is time for Mare!

It's all right. It has some pervasive issues with typos that kind of took the wind out of some dramatic scenes for me, but this little indie RPG Maker horror game clearly had a lot of heart and tears put into it, and I enjoyed my time with it. It took me about four hours to get what seems to be both of the main endings, and that included an as-it-turns-out unnecessary bout of minigame grinding for cash and items in the endgame. What can I say? I'm a cautious player.

The nonspoiler pitch is: your character wakes up barely remembering their own name and seeks to find out what happened to them and why they lost their memory.

Surreal, graphic violence ensues.

I suspect that for people who are averse to spoilers that this is one of those games that you should just kind of play and see what happens if the content isn't a turnoff. I'll give some endgame spoiler thoughts below the cut.

Mind those content warnings on the download page and get it here at itch.io.

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It's a very interesting take on the idea of the citizens of dream worlds having their own thoughts and feelings. I got some pleasant "Link's Awakening with more blood" vibes from it once it was revealed what was going on. It's very much its own thing, of course - the dreamer is a suicidal victim of transbashing and not a flying whale god - but I'm pretty picky about "it was all a dream" stories, and this one is great at that aspect in both true endings.

As a writer, I prefer True Ending 1, where the dreamer awakens. Sure, you have to come out of the dream eventually... but you can always go back. I like that, and find it rings true for my work.

[lurkdragonstuff]

What? Danielle is evolving!

[lurkdragonstuff]

Ahhhhh... much more to my liking than the previous custom sprite, which had too much Rattata left in the design for me, particularly in the face. I did make one concession to the thought of "how is it using all of the Rattata line's biting moves" with a set of leaf incisors.

Also Hoppip's dinky tail is much funnier than a leaf there, I think.